Monthly Archives: September 2023

At the moment the study of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole gets boosts from both sides of the Atlantic. On the US Virgin Islands, Gylchris and Gilbert Sprauve (in coöperation with Peter Stein and me) work on a book with dialogues in Dutch Creole. More about it in near future.

In Europe, at the moment the University of Aarhus is the beating heart. Historian Rasmus Christensen (University of Copenhagen) and linguist/creolist Peter Bakker (Aarhus University) have discovered seven eighteenth and nineteenth century short texts which add interesting information to the history of Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, and especially to the use of the language in newspapers. Recently an article about these texts was published by Kristoffer Friis Boegh (Aarhus University), Peter Bakker (Aarhus University), Rasmus Christensen (University of Copenhagen) and me.

All texts are interesting, but the following is perhaps the most moving. In Enrique Corneiro’s 2018 book Runaway Virgins, Danish West Indian slave adds, several advertisements contain information about the enslaved people being speakers of Dutch Creole. However none of the ads is written in Creole. Rasmus Christensen found the following text (Hansteen, B. (1817, January 23). ‘Notichi’. St. Thomæ Tidende. http://hdl.handle.net/109.3.1/uuid:05863d96-89b4-4272-8dd1-7d91bf06385d)

Escaped from me a small youngster/boy named Paaty. He/she is nine years and
nine days old. Any person/people who are able to bring him/her inside the Fort
[i.e., Fort Christian in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas] to the undersigned, I will
give him/her three dollars!! I have heard that he/she is in the higher grasslands
where the mestizo-whites are keeping him/her.

(Translation by Boegh et al. 2023)

Hopefully the article will soon be widely available!

Boegh, Kristoffer Friis, Peter Bakker, Cefas van Rossem & Rasmus Christensen. 2023. “Seven newly discovered 18th and 19th century Virgin Islands Dutch Creole Texts”, in: Faraclas, N., R. Severing, E. Echteld, S. Delgado & W. Rutgers (eds) Caribbean Convivialities and Caribbean Sciences: Inclusive Approaches tot he Study of the Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the Dutch Caribbean and Beyond. Willemstad: University of Curaçao. pp. 93-116.